SCGSSM 2023 Commencement Address
I had the honor of being the 2023 commencement speaker for my old high school, the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Math. It was especially good timing, since it's been 30 years since I graduated high school, so my friends and I organized a 30 year reunion at the same time.
Here's a link to a video of my speech.
Here's a link to my speaking notes. I used a table with alternating colors to make it easier to follow where I was.
I had several students thank me for the speech, especially the parts about handling failure and about not always listening to your parents. Yeah, I know that second one is going to bite me in the future, but now is now and I'll enjoy time with my kids in the meanwhile.
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Thank you for the kind introduction.
As you just heard, I'm a professor of computer science at
Carnegie Mellon University. Now, inviting a professor to speak is a dangerous
proposition, because as you may know, we professors have been trained to talk
about anything for 90 minutes. I promise I won't take that long, and you should
count your blessings that they didn’t let me use Powerpoint slides today.
My main area of research is in cybersecurity. If you've ever
played a game teaching you about cybersecurity, or if you've ever received a
simulated phishing email that, when you click on it says you almost fell for a
scam, I helped pioneer those, you can blame me for those.
Perhaps most relevant for today, I'm GSSM class of 1993.
That means I'm pretty familiar with all of the joys and the pains you’ve
experienced, as well as many of the things you got away with your junior and
senior years.
Now, I’d like to think that the GSSM faculty have invited me
to speak here because of my good looks, but my wife gently suggested to me that
that probably wasn’t the case. Instead, she said that, since I talk to so many
undergraduates in my job, I should share the most useful things I tell
students. So I’ve organized what I want to say as four things I would tell my
17 year old self if I were graduating today.
For Advice #1 , let me tell you a story. My brother was
having lunch with a married couple and their daughter, and the daughter had
just finished her first year at college. The wife was recounting an incident
that happened recently, where she discovered that her husband had the Tinder
dating app on his smartphone. If you don't know, Tinder is the most popular
dating app out there. You can see people's profiles and swipe left or right on
them to make a match. As you might expect, the wife started yelling at the
husband, thinking that he was cheating on her. The husband swore up and down
that he didn't install Tinder and didn't know why it was on his phone
After several minutes of this, in a flash of insight, the
wife remembered that they had a shared smartphone account, with the same apps
automatically installed across all of their phones. So, if the husband didn't
install Tinder, and the wife didn't install Tinder...
This was the moment their daughter started turning 14 shades
of red, because she just found out that not only did her parents know she was
using Tinder, they could also see who she was swiping on.
So Advice #1: Get a
separate smartphone account from your parents
For the folks in the back, you can't really see it, but it
looks like some of the soon to be graduates are on their smartphones deleting
some apps.
The rest of my advice is going to be a bit more serious
For Advice #2 let me
start with some statistics. College is a lot harder today than it was in my
generation and your parents’ generation. At a lot of colleges, about 30% of
students are diagnosed with anxiety, and about that same percentage diagnosed
with depression. That number can be even higher at top-ranked schools. There
are a lot of causes for this, including feeling lonely on campus, being a
minority on campus, and feeling that you’re just falling behind everything and
everyone.
I don’t have answers for all of these, but I do talk to a
lot of students about that last one, about feeling like you’re falling behind.
What do I tell them?
I tell them that Ty Cobb's batting average is 0.366
Now, we have a lot of international students, so I often
have to explain what a batting average is. It’s roughly how often a player gets
on base every time they are at bat. So Ty Cobb’s batting average means that he
was getting on base about 36% of the time. There have been over 20000 people
who have played in MLB, and at the very top of career batting averages is Ty
Cobb. But think about what this all means. It means that one of the greatest
players in baseball history, was only succeeding about one-third of the time.
When I was introduced on stage, they only mentioned my
successes. But let me tell you, the number of failures I have would fill
volumes. In my senior year at GSSM, I was rejected from most of the colleges I
applied to. That hurt a lot. In many PhD programs, you have to take an exam
your second year, demonstrating breadth and depth of knowledge in your field. I
failed mine the first time I took it. That also hurt a lot. It made me really
wonder if I wasn’t good enough. As I neared completion of my PhD, I interviewed
for a lot of jobs at universities and at Google. I got zero offers. So I
delayed finishing my PhD for a year before doing another round of interviews
and finally succeeding.
Now at this point, the GSSM faculty are probably wondering
if they made a mistake in inviting me to speak.
But you know what's really interesting? I'm lucky enough to
work with some of the best computer scientists, psychologists, and designers on
the entire planet, and they all have numerous stories of failure and adversity
just like mine.
So what's my advice here?
Failure is going to
be a constant companion for the rest of your life. You’re going to get knocked
down a lot, and it won’t always feel fair. Be kind to yourself as you get back
up, and remember that a lot of success in life comes from just being
persistent. And remember Ty Cobb. Only succeeded about 1/3 of the time, still
one of the greatest baseball players that ever lived.
Advice #3
You’re going to be meeting some amazing fellow students and
professors, and you’re going to be presented with an amazing set of
opportunities. Go take that weird and potentially fun class in college. Don’t
just go for the easy courses, look up teaching reviews of professors and take
that harder class where the professor will really challenge you. Find some
independent research opportunities with a professor, partly because it lets you
explore things you can’t normally in a class, and partly because it can help
you build a lasting connection with a faculty member
And I’m about to say something I know I will likely regret,
because my kids are 3 and 8 years old and they will use this against me in the
future.
Don’t always listen to your parents. Most parents will steer
you towards the safe path, but that’s not necessarily the best path for you.
Advice #3 – search
for and embrace your inner geek
Find something you can love so deeply. Find something where
you can make a positive difference in people's lives, no matter how big or how
small it may seem, whether it is music, organic chemistry, climate change, your
local school district, or cybersecurity. I promise you we will still love you
even if you become a lawyer
Advice #4
I'd like to tell you about my GSSM roommate. His name was
Brantley Stone, and he really loved linguistics. He was constantly trying to
get us to learn Esperanto, a language that was invented 140 years ago for int’l
communication. I still remember the dirty look he gave me when I commented that
there were probably more people in the world that spoke Star Trek Klingon than
Esperanto.
You've probably noticed that I'm talking about Brantley in
the past tense, and it's because he passed away in 2004 at age 29. And this is
actually one of my biggest regrets in life. I always thought that there would
be more time, that we could get the old gang back together and keep doing silly
things together. But I kept putting it off, I let our friendship drift, and
then, one day, it was too late.
Of all the things I wish I could tell my 17 year old self, this is the most important: friends and family are what really matter the most.
The challenge, however, is that things are again much harder
for your generation. There’s actually an epidemic of loneliness in developed
countries around the world. A recent study out of Harvard found that 61% of
young adults feel “serious loneliness.” Multiple other studies have found that
people today have far fewer close friends than a few decades ago, with 10-15%
of people saying they have zero close friends. This is really problematic
because having good friends is the equivalent of quitting smoking. People who
have strong relationships live longer, are less likely to get sick, & are
less likely to have depression & dementia
Many of these computer technologies you have at your
fingertips are a trap. It’s far too easy to just isolate yourself and watch
streaming video or play games on your smartphone all day. Social media also
doesn’t cut it. For most people, social media just gives you the illusion of a
connection. We’ve built apps that give us everything we want, but not
necessarily everything we need.
So I have to adjust what I just said: Friends and family are what really matter the most, and you have to
make time for it.
And one thing you can do is don’t let your friendships fade.
You just spent two years geeking out with a bunch of like-minded folks over
physics, chemistry, math, and the best ways of sneaking into places you’re not
supposed to be in. Don’t let those
friendships fade.
You know, your 10 year reunion is a lot closer than you
realize. It might not seem so, but time plays tricks and I promise you it is. One
day, perhaps you’ll be shopping, perhaps you’ll be in a self-driving car, you’ll
hear a song that reminds you of your senior year. And then, to your horror, you
discover that you’re listening to the oldies radio station. It won't be
tomorrow, it won't be next year, but it will happen. But when that happens, I
hope you’ll remember the friends you made here, and I hope you’ll get back in
touch with them.
And while we’re still on the topic of friends, I wanted to
make a special shout out to my fellow GSSM class of 93 friends who came from
all corners of the United States to heckle me today and to celebrate our 30
year reunion. Adam Chris John Tony, I’m a better person because of all of you.
Erika, Charlos, it is so awesome to see you again. Here’s to hoping we’ll have
at least another 30.
So in closing, may your lives be filled with joy and passion.
May you do great things with your life. Never underestimate how much good you
can do in the world. And since I just caused a lot of grief for your parents, be
sure to regularly call them when you’re at college and tell them how much you
love them. But don’t forget to get a separate smartphone account too.
Congratulations class of 2023, you survived!!
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